Good bass habitat along the Pend Oreille River system is common. There are a number of good sloughs and backwaters where bass like to sun themselves and hide while they wait for small fish, mice and whatever else may appeal to their healthy appetites.

Fishing Largemouth on Pend Oreille River

Lake Pend Oreille, among most fishermen, is known for its population of large rainbow trout imported into the system from the interior of Canada.

For this reason, it may surprise many that North Idaho actually has some rather fine bass fishing for largemouth. Not only do the Clark Fork / Pend Oreille River systems hold this species in relative abundance, many of the smaller lakes such as Shephard, Cocollala and even Robinson Lake near the Canadian border in the Panhandle hold Micropterus salmoides. For size they range to an occasional 8 pounds, with a six-pounder common enough that most bass fishers in North Idaho have caught at least one in that size category.

For good largemouth bass habitat, look for grass shorelines, trees that have fallen into the water (especially sunken) and cattails. Little islands of cattails and grass are best because they may actually be floating above deeper water. And never overlook beaver runs near lodges.

The Person You Take Fishing Can Make or Break the Trip

I’ve learned a lot about fishing over the years. I’ve had incredibly good days and some really tough ones. I’ve learned some lessons that have taught me the importance of selecting the persons I go with, whether I take them or they take me.

Whether on a river or a lake, your boat companion can make or break your experience. This article is about who you choose to fish with and why. I have one primary principle I hold to: no negativity–and there’s a reason.

The Reason is Simple

That companion can make the day memorable or terrible depending on the type of attitude they bring to the boat.

It’s not just the degree of my enjoyment that’s at stake in the choice. I believe it affects whether we catch fish or not. Positive attitudes win, even with inexperienced fishers. Negative attitudes filled with complaining, doubting, and blaming seldom produce good fishing. Even if in the latter case, we are lucky to catch fish, I find I go home regretting the loss of valuable time when I’ve been around negativity too long.

Good Company, Good Memories

I’ve spent the entire day in a boat with a complainer and I’ve spent two days in a boat with a gossip. But I spend a month in a boat with someone who looks at fishing with pleasure and accepts the challenge no matter the conditions, no matter the weather, no matter the catch. And I’ll choose to remember and fish again with the one who adds to my pleasure.

Encouragement and Fun Contribute to Success

If you encourage a boy or girl and praise them moderately when they succeed, they will take the challenge of fishing with enthusiasm and in time become greater fishers. This is true with children of every age. If you take a fully grown man or woman fishing for the first time in this person’s life, they are a child on the water. They have to start new and there’s no way around that. Encourage them and give them moderate praise when they succeed and you’ll not only have a friend for life, but you’ll see the reward in their expression of life as they begin to believe they too can succeed at fishing.

Fishing Replenishes the Soul

Even in the dead of winter on a frozen lake, all by yourself, you can sit and watch the wonders of this creation. That’s reason enough.

Food on the Table

I don’t know about you, but I love to eat fish! I’d much rather have fresh fish–that I know has been properly handled (by me)–than poorly handled in shipping by unknown hands. Somehow it just tastes better when I’ve caught it.

Time with a Friend

It can be Challenging

It’s Great to Be Recognized

The praise of an adult toward a child, or the encouragement of a friend in the landing of a good fish adds to one’s self esteem and personal value. Some of the greatest friends in my life have been the men and women with whom I first fished.

A Sound Principle in Teaching Kids To Fish

Part of the young excitement for kids in learning to fish is showing off what they caught. Teaching them how to prepare their catch gives them the responsibility for having caught it.

When Fish Are Killed, They Should Be Eaten

As young folks learn how to fish and hunt, they bring home more and more of their harvest. Showing them how to clean, prepare and cook what they take is a vital part of the American sportsman ethic. I release more fish than I keep; but I far prefer wild fish over farm-raised, store boat varieties.To me, it’s a blessing to have wild game or fish on our table; so I teach this principle to young people who have this interest in partaking of the wild. I teach it also to their parents or guardians when asked for advice. In business there’s a proverbial cliche that it’s better to teach a man to fish than to give him fish to eat. I agree with that completely.

The interesting phenomenon is that this approach invariably yields some of the more enthusiastic and devoted conservationists in the American outdoor world–that’s both my experience and my opinion. By learning to utilize as much as possible our entire harvest we learn to become excellent stewards of our natural resources.

Nominations for the 2012 IFishWrite Big Splash Award for Excellence in Angling Journalism

Providing knowledge is part of the value, but bringing it to you in an entertaining, inspiring manner feeds the dream. We’re constantly looking for angling sites that provide a number of criteria in a highly interesting manner. If you know of such a site we may have not yet seen or analyzed please share it by contacting us here.

Let’s Make A Splash!

And for that reason I have selected the following sites as the most outstanding angling urls thus far in my personal experience. (I have friends who will hate me–but I have a policy in place as well.) These site recommendations are nominees at this point, not winners. I’ll post more as I come across them and find them worthy of attention. I have a selected review board of anglers who have agreed to participate as Judges in this first annual IFishWrite BIG SPLASH Award for Online Excellence in Angling Journalism.

I’m awarding four categories for this annual recognition:

Best of Content

Best of Photography

Best Outfitter

Best All-Around

Best Outfitter

Please participate with me by posting your recommendations in the comment section. We’ll consider and weigh every site suggested–please no spam–we’ll reject that and I’ll report you! I’m asking for legitimate site recommendations that have to do with FISHING.

I’ll post the winners of 2012 competition on or about January 1st of 2013. I have a select Board of Judges whom I’ll name at that time with links to their sites. (No they are not allowed to recommend themselves, nor am I. Read the Policy here.) Our idea is to link you to what’s really good and who does it, so that we can all improve our sites.

Here’s my list of contenders so far:

Bass Angling Archives (Content) Angling writers Terry Battisti and Pete Robbins combine their skills to bring their readers the best in bass angling history.

Tosh Brown (Photography)Texas-based Tosh Brown is a full time outdoor photographer and writer whose willingness to share technique and lore makes him exceptional.

Deneki Outdoors (Outfitters) Operators of quality fly fishing lodges in the Bahamas, British Columbia, and Alaska, these bloggers provide food of vision to inspire fishers of adventure.

11) Promotes or provides stories and facts about the history of angling

12) Promotes safety through awareness

13) Carries relevance to today’s angling challenges

14) Demonstrates excellence in media presentation

Answers to the above questions are rated from one to ten. If you would like to suggest a qualifying question or become one of our deciding Board of Advisors, please contact us here. If you would like to suggest a website for consideration of the 2013 IFishWrite Award of Excellence in Angling Journalism, please contact us here.

All recommendations are reviewed for consideration by our select Board of Advisors. Nominations for next year’s awards will close at midnight Pacific Standard Time, December 15, 2012.

One Fine Passion

I am fortunate to carry a passion for fishing in my heart. I’ve learned many things from it that apply directly to successes in life, in relationships and in the study of things.

North Idaho has it all when it comes to the great outdoors. Taking part in what’s here in a meaningful way adds life to my old bones and brings enthusiasm into my daily enterprise. I find that when I relate to the Nature around me in this positive way that I then also relate in positive ways to the people and challenges found in business.

So fishing became a metaphor where I could lay things out for comparison and see a little better into other events unfolding in my life. The river flows. On it and in it there are many dangers, many surprises and a delightful bounty when you learn to read it and become one with it. I call this latter notion my Zen Attitude, though I don’t study Zen or practice it knowledgeably. Like the metaphor, my Zen Attitude is simply a parallel to a known philosophy. I like to get into The Zone, for instance where thoughts are not being thought, but realizations and insights occur in the moment where I’m in a fully cooperative relationship with the water and air environments around me.

At this stage of my life when most of my friends have retired (but not all, and certainly not me), recreational fishing is a way of analyzing the complexities of modern life and of finding balance within it all. I’ve made many solid friendships too along the way, either on shore or wading or in a boat; and many of those relationships like Mike Robertson of Calgary’s Bow River Blog have become lifelong albeit long distant fishing buddies.

Predator of Another Kind

I had just pushed off Go Fish Charter’s Fishing Guide, Chad Landrum, and his happy 3-man charter from my dock where they had come into lunch and share their stories of a good morning on walleye. As the boat moved out and took current under his engine, I saw this carcass floating right beside the dock. At first glance I thought it was small mouth bass, and told Chad on the phone that’s what I thought I had seen. He told me he had seen it as well and that he thought it was a tench, and ancient holdover generally considered a scrap fish.

The Phenomenon

Chad was right. when I processed the digital and looked at it more carefully, I could see that it was indeed a tench. Though the eyes are the same color as that of a small mouth, the head is shaped differently, showing the bottom feeder of a non-predatory genealogy. What I found most interesting was the way in which the obviously dead fish had been eaten. The bite and scratch marks were not recognizably like anything I had ever seen on aquatic carrion in North Idaho. I went on about my business just kind of puzzled, trying to think what kind of animal or bird would have eaten a dead fish in that manner.

It wasn’t until the following day when we hosted the Cofrances family of kids and two of their close friends that the mystery came to light. I heard one of the older teens, Bob Byrum’s daughter, Beth Byrum, exclaim that there was a large turtle in the water at the edge of the sandy shoreline. Beth is the youngest member of an incredible singing group, Sarabeth, that I hope to feature sometime on this or another site.

I expected to see a Painted Turtle, a variety common to these waters; instead, I was surprised to see, when she picked it up, that it was in fact a non-native Snapping Turtle. I had seen them before on a trip through the South.

That was now several days ago. I’ve mentioned it to half a dozen people I know and was surprised to learn that others who’ve lived around Lake Pend Oreille all of their lives have seen them before also. My brother-in-law for one had heard something scratching in his garage a year ago or so and was shocked to find a Snapping Turtle sitting on the seat of his riding lawnmower.

Invasive Species

How they got here is anybody’s guess. I say probably an aquarium release of a young turtle or two when someone moved. Who knows. I can only guess at this point that they are reproducing. This one was a male. It was obvious–let’s just leave it at that.

I certainly intend to question Idaho Department of Fish & Game officials about it. I’ll show them the photos if they laugh at me. And if I learn more, I’ll share it here on IFishWrite.

Know Your Fish

I fish with a lot of different people in any given season. Many of them are from out-of-state and many are new to fishing altogether. The problem is we, like many states, have an increasingly complex set of regulations; yet the burden of knowledge rests on the angler. Many novice fishers don’t know a peno from a whitefish. In one case, I kept quiet. They would learn at the dinner table.

Go Figure

Your ability to correctly identify a fish caught in the Lake Pend Oreille reservoir and river systems as well as in the Clark Fork River flowing into North Idaho from Montana can mean the difference between reward and violation. This includes North Idaho’s Pack River, the primary river feeding the north end of Lake Pend Oreille and it’s tributary streams as well as lesser streams flowing directly into the lake system, of which there are many. Your knowledge of what fish is which may be the difference between a hefty fine, a sometimes hefty fish for the table or a rather hefty bounty for catching a predator the Idaho Department of Fish & Game deems undesirable to the Pend Oreille Lake fishery.

The Bounty

Though this is likely the last season on this system to carry a bounty on Lake Trout (Mackinaw), IF&G is contemplating introducing its controversial but effective plan on North Idaho’s Priest Lake system in 2013. The objective in this aggressive management policy is to reduce large predators considered responsible for the collapse of kokanee populations in these large bodies of water.

Kokanee (sometimes locally referred to as “bluebacks” are a variety of landlocked sockeye salmon that in good years run12 to 15 inches and populate in very large schools. Hunters and wood harvesters will often see red kokanee in huge numbers on streams that flow directly into these lakes from as early as October well into December as these freshwater salmon go upstream to spawn and die for the next generation of the species.

Kokanee were once so abundant in Lake Pend Oreille and Priest Lake that there was a commercial fishery for them. When I was in junior high school in the early 1960s, we could hand-line for them and keep 50 apiece. By the mid-90’s, the Priest Lake population had collapsed and those in Lake Pend Oreille were in danger of collapsing. The predator management policy introduced first on Lake Pend Oreille was a desperate measure by the department to cull large predators from the system where everything else had failed to revitalize the kokanee numbers.

In 2010, a bounty of $15 per head was placed on Mackinaw Trout (they are actually a char) as well as the Rainbow Trout in the lake as an incentive to reduce the over-abundant populations of these two species, and that under a harsh cry from avid anglers who were sure IF&G was destroying a legendary fishery. However the incentive dominated. some guys, giving in, made a fair living harvesting Lakers and Rainbow despite the fact that specialists from New Finland were brought in to net Mackinaw off their known spawning beds. Biologists radio-tagged some large macks to follow them to their redds and maps were drawn to show the netters where these large lake trout were choosing to spawn.

The third species in this discussion is the brook trout. You won’t likely catch one in the lake and river system other than some fair-sized ones on occasion in streams like Cocollala Creek. I’ve never taken one or heard of anyone catching one in the Pend Oreille River or Lake. Neither one is suitable habitat. I mention Brook Trout because their markings are very similar to that of Dolly Varden. Mackinaw, especially younger first-year and second-year specimens could be misconstrued to be Brook Trout by anyone not familiar with distinctions. So the point is: read the regulations and do as they suggest. Know the differences and respect what you catch. Beyond that, go and enjoy a good day’s catch!

Now in my 64th year, I celebrate the 4th of July in North Idaho with a pensive heart because i don’t want to ever forget the many men and women who paid with their lives for the freedoms we enjoy. Let’s not forget those who are crippled physically and mentally either–because they paid also a price for us to enjoy these times.

I can’t imagine any one of those serving America wanted to die or be injured or suffer remorse later. Certainly I want to enjoy a holiday like this, and I do; but to go on without mention of these lives lost and ruined is to ignore the pain that brought us the freedoms we have.

Let’s do our best to hold on to the independence we so valiantly earned.

Camouflage

Coloration within a fish species quite often varies from one lake, river or stream to another. Sometimes these color differences are so slight they can hardly be distinguished from one location to the next. In other cases, the distinction is so prevalent, the fish can appear to be a variety of the same species; but to my knowledge the variance in coloration is simply a camouflage adaptation to match the general color of the bottom of the body of water.

Fish Wear Camo Too

This unretouched photograph of a prize large mouth bass was taken on a rather dark, grey day. The particularly dark coloration of near black on this bass, however, is typical of MacArthur Reservoir large mouth. It’s a species adaption that allows individual fish to blend with the dark color of this shallow bird sanctuary where fish hawks are plentiful and capable.